


If You Stay I'll Be Forgiven

by waltzmatildah



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 04:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7085209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: <i>enemies and friends...</i> Lucy comes back from Malawi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Stay I'll Be Forgiven

_enemies..._

She's back for three days before she runs into him. And the sudden surprise he tries, fails, to hide tells her the news of her return isn't yet common knowledge. Which is rare around these parts...

She blinks once, twice, three times. He's still standing right where she found him and so she figures the next move is up to her.

Ducks her head, chin to chest, eyes to the floor, and stalks past him without a word. Tells herself it's for him as much as she knows it's all for her, too.

 

 

Her time in Malawi had been everything she'd hoped it would be and then some. Irrepressible heat that invaded every molecule, suffocated every distant thought before it could form beyond oh and a tangible ripple of salty regret, bitter on the tip of her tongue.

 

 

Twenty four months. She's been back for three days and it's like she never even left.

 

 

She hears rumours after that. Chinese whispers that work their way up and down the winding corridors. Through sterile operating theatres and emptied out on-call rooms.

She is the bad guy in this story and really, she expected little else.

 

 

He's an attending now she notes with a start. Hadn't stopped to contemplate that the world would keep spinning even as she checked out of it for a while. The dark blue looks good on him. He wears it well.

She raises an eyebrow when she's told he ended up choosing trauma. Her ego is just intact enough to lay the blame for that decision firmly at her own two feet.

It's another three days before their paths cross again and this time, it is him who turns and walks away.

 

 

Later, she's three quarters of the way through a bottle of New Zealand white when he walks into Joe's.

Immediately figures the night can only end badly.

One way or another.

 

 

She manages to wait out thirty seven minutes, and a tequila shot, before she gathers together the courage, the stupidity, she never truly figures out which, to approach him.

He remains alone, propped on a stool at the end of the long bar. There's a tumbler of something dark between his fingers, an emptied beer glass off to one side that may or may not be his.

"Hello."

His reply comes by way of glass lifted to lips. Liquid drained.

He doesn't so much as look in her direction.

 

 

She leaves then. Collects her purse, sober suddenly, and steps out into the muted dark.

Pretends his indifference means nothing to her.

_friends..._

She walks for a while. Has consumed far too much wine to drive, but not nearly enough that admitting defeat and catching a cab is an option either. It's raining halfheartedly. Light enough that you can convince yourself it's not happening at all, but heavy enough that damp clouds hang low, oppressive, in the night sky.

There are never any stars in Seattle. And she thinks that's what she misses most about Africa. The never ending night sky, so vast you'd think it could swallow you whole.-  
The ultimate in glow-in-the-dark bedroom night-scapes.

 

 

She registers footsteps first. Heavy against the loose gravel path. And her heart-beat ramps up a level or seven beneath her rib-cage as she curses her decision to go with the impractical heels she's currently navigating.

She's fumbling in her over-sized handbag, which, again, impractical, for a weapon when he calls out to her, tentative, whisper-soft. Resigned, she thinks.

"Lucy, wait..."

She sighs around a sob of relief that tastes of more than just her own personal safety. Wants to laugh, to tell him she never stopped doing just that. That's she sorry and that she's scared and that she'll never regret going, but that she'll always regret how she got there...

 

 

In the end, she does as he asks. Waits. Keeps her back to him and can't quite bring herself to imagine what his next words will be.

"I'm sorry..."

Is definitely not expecting that.

She spins then. Arms outstretched. Extravagant in a way she never remembers being previously. Opens her mouth to counter his apology but never quite manages to find the right words.

"Oh, Alex..."

 

 

He closes the distance between them swiftly then. And it might be the rain clouding her vision, and it might be the wine that is still curling though her veins, but he's over there one minute and right up in front of her the next...

One finger pressed solidly against her lips.

"Shhhh..."

 

 

He removes his finger then. Settles his hands on her shoulders instead. He looks older, she thinks. Tired and wrung out.

A mirror image of her own hollowed out emptiness.

She has a thousand consonants, ten thousand vowels, all tangled up and twisted inside her head. Knows without having to remember, to remember before, that words are not his style.

Is suddenly grateful for the fact.

 

 

She kisses him. Slow and deliberate. Gentle at first, gives him the option to back away.

When he doesn't so much as flinch, she slips her fingers into the rain-dampened hair at the nape of his neck and vows never to let him go again.

Uses her tongue against his teeth to tell him all the things she never could with words. Her knee pressed up between his thighs to make him understand all the things she knows she could never adequately explain.

The beat of her heart against his chest to say the I'm so sorry she knows he'll never want to hear...

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Famous Last Words' by My Chemical Romance.


End file.
